Nearly every decently performing company is on social media and you probably are, too. You know the benefits of a powerful presence on social networks like Facebook and Instagram so we won’t get into that today.
However, do you monitor your competitor’s social media regularly?
Tracking your competitors’ social media pages will help you outpace them.
A social media competitor analysis is a must for anyone who wants to fine-tune their social media strategy and discover what works. This could save you a lot of time and effort in the long run.
And if you want to save even more time and effort, use Panoramata to monitor your competitors’ social media activity. We can track any brand you request. Sign up below to learn more!
In this article, I’ll show you how to perform a social media competitive analysis in just a few steps.
Let’s dive in!
What is social media competitor analysis?
A social media competitor analysis is the process of tracking your competitors’ social media activity, including their strategy, engagement metrics and performance, and extracting insights from the information you’ve collected.
A social media competitor analysis entails tracking metrics like:
- Number of followers and follower growth
- Number of likes and comments
- Number of shares
- How often they post
- What times they post
- Content formats
- Tone
- Audience sentiment
- Sponsorships and partnerships
These are just a few metrics or data you can track.
What are the benefits of social media competitor analysis?
Monitoring your competitors’ social media presence is ultimately about how you can improve your social media strategy (not just solely about learning their tricks and techniques).
Here are the benefits of a social media competitor analysis for brands:
Benchmark your business
Set proper goals for your social media following and engagement by peeping at your competitors’ social media. It’s an easy way to see if you’re lagging behind or if your social media strategy is up to par with your competitors.
Find social media post inspiration
Your competition can also be massive source of content inspiration. While you can lift entire post ideas from your competitors, you can play around with different formats, angles, and post hooks.
Aside from that, you can also see which are the best times to post and the optimum frequency of posts throughout the week.
Save time and resources
Experimenting with your marketing is a good thing but you don’t have to do trial and error every time.
Competitor tracking helps you identify which posts are effective and ineffective so you can copy the good practices and discard the bad ideas. Save yourself the stress and let your competition do the hard work for you.
Once you’ve gotten a list of your competitors, pare down the list to three to five key competitors. Choose those who offer the most similar or same products as your brand and have the same target customer profile.
Identify gaps and opportunities
Furthermore, with social media competitor analysis, you can exploit your competitors’ weaknesses and fill in gaps in their content. You can also easily think of ways to differentiate your brand from the competition.
If they’re not doing well on one channel, you can boost your presence on that channel. If they lack video resources, that tells you you need to hone in on video post formats.
Stay on top of trends
Social media moves at a breakneck pace. New memes and trends appear seemingly overnight (and vanish just as quickly).
If you don’t observe your competitors regularly, you will risk getting left behind and looking outdated. Staying aware of trends keeps you agile, so you can adapt to new technology and shifts in customer preferences without missing a beat.
How to do a social media competitor analysis
Identify your competitors on social media
First, you need to define who your competitors are before you can track and analyze their social media profiles.
There are many ways to do this, but we recommend using competitor analysis tools like Panoramata to identify competitors for you. That way, you can get started right away with the whole process.
Alternatively, if you already have competitors in mind, you can skip this step.
You can also find competitors manually, if you wish. Identify relevant keywords for your brand on a tool like Google Adwords Keyword Planner.
Then, choose your top (most relevant) keywords. Plug each keyword into Google and hit search.
The search results pages will include pages from potential competitors who are already ranking for your keywords.
But that’s not all. You can also check those same keywords on social media platforms like Instagram.
For example, you can do a search for “women’s tote bags” on Instagram and check the top brands on the search results.
Once you’ve gotten a list of your competitors, pare down the list to three to five key competitors. Choose those who offer the most similar or same products as your brand and have the same target customer profile.
Gather data on key competitors
Now, your social media sleuthing begins. Take a preliminary look at your key competitors’ social media profiles. Take note of the following:
- The social media websites they are on
- What they say about themselves on their bio
- The number of followers they have
- How quickly their following has grown
- Their posting frequency
- Their posting schedule
- Their top posts
- Number of reactions
- Number of comments
- Number of shares, tags, or mentions
- Their top followers
- Their content mix
- Hashtags
- Influencers they’ve collaborated with
- Partnerships they have
- Their focus for each platform
- The “look” of each of their social media pages
- Their branding and tone of voice
- Their paid content on social media
- Any changes they make to their social media pages and how often those changes are made (for example, changing their profile name on X)
Compare yourself to your competitors through a SWOT analysis
Now that you have your data collected, it’s time to analyze. But we’re not conducting just any other type of analysis–we will compare your performance with your competitors in a process called a SWOT analysis.
You might have already heard of this but the gist is to identify your strengths and weaknesses relative to your competitors and find opportunities and threats so you can plan ahead.
Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors. This is just about your brand and how it’s performing.
Meanwhile, threats and opportunities are external factors that can affect your business.
Strengths: What internal attributes give you a competitive advantage?
Weaknesses: What internal attributes give you a disadvantage or limit your performance?
Opportunities: What external factors can help you or give you a competitive advantage?
Threats: What external factors threaten to harm your business?
It helps to visualize your SWOT findings in a table and brainstorm with your team to get everyone’s perspective.
Next, turn your insights into action points. Based on your SWOT analysis, what will you do next? Develop your strategy from there.
For example, you may discover that your competitor has a very strong TikTok presence, but you are not even on TikTok yet. You can then start building a TikTok strategy to counter theirs.
However, it doesn’t end there. You have to revisit your findings and data regularly, adjusting things depending on the outcome.
You will also have to conduct ongoing monitoring in the meantime to identify trends and opportunities as they come up.
Discover your competitive strengths and take advantage of opportunities with our free SWOT analysis template.
Stay ahead with competitor social media tracking and analysis
Crush your competition by tracking them and making a careful strategy that uses your strengths to hit their weak points and leverage opportunities for yourself.
Competitive analysis doesn’t need to be complicated, especially with tools like Panoramata.
Panoramata tracks your competitors’ social media profiles for you automatically, including their follower growth, top posts, and engagement rates, so you can say goodbye to manual tracking forever.
Try it out today to see the difference. Book a demo with us or take it out for a spin by signing up here.
FAQs
What is a social media competitor analysis?
It is the process of tracking and analyzing your competitors' social media activity to understand their strategies, engagement metrics, and performance, ultimately to improve your own social media approach.
Why is competitor analysis important?
It helps you to benchmark your business, find content inspiration, save time and resources, identify gaps and opportunities, and stay on top of trends in the ever-changing social media landscape.
How do I start a social media competitor analysis?
Begin by identifying your key competitors, gathering data on their social media presence, and then comparing your performance using tools like a SWOT analysis.
